


A Study in Beauty

by TheColorBlue



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-14
Updated: 2011-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheColorBlue/pseuds/TheColorBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ludwig reflects on beauty and art. Feliciano is beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Beauty

Feliciano has the face and the body like a boy who's been allowed to eat his fill at every meal, olive oil and dark vinegar soaked through the bread crust and plump olives piled into bowls besides tall bottles of red wine, and his face dusted with flour from helping in kitchens, kneading the dough with soft hands. Feliciano is soft and sweet and sleepy, lying in fields with the scent of the earth in the air, a cat curled up next to him. Ludwig is used to seeing him and thinking of cherubs, all smooth lines and heavy lids. Feliciano looks different sitting on a bench in Firenze's Accademia di Belle Arti gallery, surrounded by the columns and cool white of the gallery's classical architecture, the powerful musculature of Michelangelo's statues and drawings on display.

It is Monday. The gallery should be closed to visitors, but Feliciano is Feliciano, and Ludwig is Ludwig, and Feliciano had, of course, little trouble accessing the gallery's works at whatever time he pleased; Ludwig had followed, upon finding Feliciano's note that morning in the apartment kitchen. The note had said that Ludwig should feel free to help himself to anything in the kitchen that he wanted to eat for breakfast, but Feliciano would be back in a few hours from the Accademia and they would have a hearty _pranzo_ together followed by a lovely siesta.

Feliciano was late coming back. And when Ludwig finally finds Feliciano, he is sitting at a bench with a drawing pad on his lap. There is a drawing on the page, and when Ludwig draws nearer, he realizes: the drawing must have taken hours. It is meticulous and delicate in the details, but also striking in the darkness of the shadows against the musculature, the confidence of the lines. It is a drawing of the statue of David.

"It's not very good," Feliciano says softly, without looking away from the statue. He puts down his pencil. "I could draw for centuries, but I would never be as good as any one of my artists." His voice is soft and tired. A thread almost like anger curls up underneath it, tight, before gently unwinding again, translucent and hard to see in the light.

Ludwig sits beside Feliciano, and for a moment the other Nation's body stiffens beside him, as though still drawn tight in a kind of frustration, not wanting to be touched. Cautiously, suddenly uncertain about this person sitting beside him, Ludwig gently lays a hand against Feliciano's temple anyway, carding his fingers through his hair.

Feliciano's hair is soft, soft like the skin at his neck and soft like his palms and the tips of his fingers, for all that the light in his eyes is hard like the marble of the statue of David. Ludwig feels clumsy, but he continues to caress and, at length, he can feel Feliciano relax into the touch. Feliciano turns into Ludwig’s hand, laying against his shoulder, unwinding, and making soft, meaningless noises into Ludwig's shirt sleeve. Ludwig thinks, without saying, perhaps Feliciano cannot draw exactly like those artists, but he is as beautiful, more beautiful than any of their works of art: beautiful like the swell of his hilltop towns against the horizon, like his fields of sunflowers spread across the countryside, like the scent of crumpled cheese and sugar and honey spread out for the end of a hearty afternoon meal. Feliciano isn't only an artist; he is art. Ludwig's tongue feels too heavy, too clumsy, to say any of these things out loud, so he holds Feliciano instead, listening to the nonsensical _ve, ve, ve_ like one would listen to music in a church: soft, and calm, and full.


End file.
